Even before recent economic times the majority of men that were paying child support were making not much above poverty level wages. Yet this has not prevented the creation of the image of the “deadbeat dad” that makes 7 figures, takes out of the country vacations, and openly ignores his financial obligations. Those guys are rare yet they are presented as the norm.

How do you figure men rarely step up to deal with unwanted pregnancies?

Do you have stats on that?

You seem to assume that most single mothers were abandoned by their child’s father.

I have to wonder how many are single by choice (they didn’t want the father directly involved so they divorced him and got child support which he has to pay on pain of debtor’s prison should he fail for any reason)

Well that follows from “Our bodies, ourselves”

Beyond that, there are still too many women that think they have a divine right to complete contriol over children, to decide how and how much the father can do with the children and to use them as pawns in divorce machinations. Perhaps when those legal inequalities are remedied and men have more of a say in the outcome, then we may start to invest more in the process. But be careful of what you wish for, JC - that investment in the decision can go either way. A man may decide he wants the child, and ask the women why his wishes should count for less than hers.

So the concept of marriage/partnership is far from outdated, it simply needs to evolve.

I certainly agree that reform is necessary, but I am not sure what you mean that marriage itself is becoming outdated?

I think marriage boils down to a ‘partnership with rights of survivorship,’ that is, both parties commit to building a life together and supporting their children, if one party dies the other inherits the whole thing, and if one party tries to walk away, they have to pay a penalty (division of assets, continuing support for some time, …) to the other.

Without such obvious arrangements, I don’t see why the average person would agree to have children with anyone else, since their valid interests (and those of their children) would not be protected.

Which aspects of that do you find outdated?

Marriage in itself is quickly becoming outdated, and I believe that the whole framework of marriage would need to be reformed for it to be an attractive option in the future.

As I said before, I don’t believe in removing custody of existing kids, or removing child support, since that may unnecessarily hurt the children.

I suppose it depends on the problem you are trying to solve. I am most concerned about how unjust the family courts, and culture, are to men that are behaving honorably/decently toward their wives and children. For society to turn a blind eye in that direction is curious indeed, for all its talk of equality, rights and fairness.

I’m not sure exactly what problem you are trying to solve. Two of your proposals would make help reduce that amount of paternity fraud (I completely agree with your proposals and that paternity fraud is a big problem), and the third one (conflict resolution) is something of a nod in the direction of father’s rights. It’s probably worth trying, and I’ll bet it would be violently opposed, given the current climate. I think your proposals are good starting points.

However, I don’t see your “sometimes people change their minds” as a principled response to my “people should face consequences when they break promises.”

You need to argue that women do not make the implicit promise I claim they do when they get married, or introduce a factor I am overlooking.

I understand that you want to level the playing field when it comes to reproduction but I’m still not sure your proposal would work. Perhaps the US needs to be more like Sweden instead? In Sweden there’s no alimony, ever, so a husband can always divorce his wife without needing to support her for years and years afterwards. So “divorcing with prejudice” makes less sense in Sweden, since alimony isn’t even on the table. If divorces are fair, then either party can always feel free to leave the marriage, if the partner behaves in an unacceptable way.

Because she made an implicit promise beforehand to make a good faith effort to bear the child, unless her husband agrees with her that she should have an abortion.

Men and women often get very excited when they, or their spouse, get pregnant, well before the baby is born. If the woman suffers a car accident and the fetus is killed, she and her husband would typically feel a great loss, sometimes rivaling the loss new parents would feel at losing a newborn.

I have noticed that in American culture, a man that gives a negative reaction when informed that his wife is pregnant and excited is generally regarded as having violated a solemn promise he made, regardless of any understanding they might have had about not wanting children. I posit that this expectation of support is very deeply ingrained and for good reasons.

I don’t see how the reverse expectation (that a woman should make a good faith effort to bear any children that she becomes pregnant with that her husband is excited about) can not hold, if we are serious about men and women being equal partners in child raising. I think that failing to take that expectation seriously in culture and law can only mean that our society does not consider men and women to have roughly equivalent roles in raising and nurturing children, even if the legal situation in which such a conflict would arise is rare.